Local car thefts decline, including at the mall

DANBURY -- It would be hard to top the audacity of the thieves who took Travis Morrell's 2001 Acura Integra Type R on June 26.

Morrell had parked the limited-edition yellow sports car at the top of the driveway, virtually under the kitchen window, at his family's Birch Street home. He'd locked it as usual and armed the sophisticated alarm system.
But sometime between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m., someone maneuvered a flatbed truck past three other cars lined up along the Morrell's double-width driveway, circumvented the alarm, and quietly winched Travis' pride and joy aboard without waking anyone in the house, his father,

Thomas Morrell
, said.
"When his mother woke up at 5 a.m., the remote for the alarm said a door was open. She checked and the car was gone," he said.
Five days later, the shell of the Acura turned up in Brooklyn, N.Y.
"They got all the parts they wanted, including the new engine that he'd paid $6,500 for. It was very sad," Thomas Morrell said.
Through the first week of November this year, Danbury police logged 102 other stolen-vehicle reports from various locations around the city. Unless it increases dramatically over the next several weeks, the total number of auto thefts will drop for the second consecutive year -- and for the third time in the last four years.
Police department spokesman Capt.

Robert Myles
said it's hard to put a finger on the reason, except for the national decline in auto thefts over the past several years.
"I wish we could take credit for it, but we aren't doing anything different," he said.
Nationally, auto theft rates have been dropping steadily since 2005, according to

Frank Scafidi
, spokesman for the
National Insurance Crime Bureau
, a Virginia-based organization that works with law enforcement and the insurance industry to reduce insurance fraud.
"We've been in a downward trend for the past four years," Scafidi said. Part of the reason is tied to the overall drop in crime rates nationally.
But technology in the form of improved vehicle anti-theft systems, better enforcement methods, and efforts by police and insurance groups to educate the public about deterring thefts have also played a role, he said.
In 2007, the last year for which national statistics are available, 1,095,769 cars and trucks were reported stolen, according to the FBI. There were 1,192,809 reported thefts in 2006 and 1,235,859 in 2005.
In Danbury, police said 147 vehicles were reported stolen in 2005, 160 in 2006, and 143 in 2007.
Somewhat surprisingly, only a tiny fraction of the local thefts occurred at the Danbury Fair mall, where car thieves ran rampant a decade ago.
Traditionally, malls, theaters, health clubs and other commercial establishments are magnets for such activity, because thieves know the owners are likely to leave their vehicles unattended for extended periods, Scafidi said.
In the 1990s, when the auto theft rate in Danbury ranged from 300 to 400 per year, nearly one in every three was snatched at the mall.
"It almost seems like we were there every day," Myles said.
But in the last four years, the highest number of car stolen at the mall was six, in 2006. There were none reported in 2005, three in 2007, and three in the first 11 months of 2008.
Those numbers may not be precise, because according to computer records provided by Danbury police, a few people each year come directly to the police station to report their car was taken, and the locations where the crime took place aren't listed.
But even if all of those thefts occurred at the mall, the annual numbers would still not reach double digits.
Mall officials declined to comment on the drop, other than to say they "cooperate closely with local police."
This year, about 30 percent of the reported vehicle thefts took place in an approximately half-mile wide corridor along Main Street between Interstate 84 and South Street.
While several occurred outside bars and restaurants, the majority were stolen from residential neighborhoods. Outside the downtown area, parking lots at condominium and apartment complexes were frequent targets.
Not all the reports were legitimate thefts, police believe. On occasion, people lend their vehicles to drug dealers in exchange for narcotics, then claim they were stolen if they're not returned, Myles said.
"Other times, somebody lets a family member take their car. When they don't hear from them for a couple of days and realize there is no insurance, they report them stolen," he said.
The national recovery rate for stolen cars is about 60 percent, according to NICB. This year in Danbury, about half were found.
Many of the unrecovered vehicles are taken by professional thieves and end up in "chop shops," where they are disassembled and sold as parts, police said.
Thomas Morrell said that's what happened to his son's Acura. "A couple of weeks before it was taken, he was at a car show at the

PAL
(Police
Activities League
) center. He found out later that three other people who attended the show had their cars taken."
A few days after the theft, Morrell's neighbor told him she'd awakened in the middle of the night and seen a flatbed truck circling the block, but hadn't thought much of it.
The four local victims "were targeted by professionals,"Morrell said. "These guys knew what they were looking for."